1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to wireless information communication systems, and in particular to numeric paging systems.
2. Description of the Prior Art
An alphanumeric paging network allows a page-originating communicant to utilize a telephone network to access the paging network and initiate a page to a page-receiving communicant in the form of a page announce, coupled with alphanumeric textual data. Typically, the page-receiving communicant has possession of a portable communication device which (1) receives radio frequency paging signals, and (2) provides a page announce signal in the event the page is received by the page-receiving communicant. Additionally, typically, the portable communication device includes an alphanumeric display which then displays the alphanumeric text data which is transmitted via radio frequency signals between a central station of the paging network and the remotely located page-receiving communicant. Once the page-receiving communicant is altered, he or she may view the display on the portable communication device and make a decision on whether or not to place a call to the telephone number or entity identified in the display of the portable communication device.
Alphanumeric paging networks are considerably more expensive than numeric paging networks, because numeric paging networks remain substantially automated, while alphanumeric paging networks most frequently require the intervention of a human operator. In practice, the page-originating communicant places a call to a telephone number identified with the alphanumeric paging service. The human operator answers the call, and takes a detailed alphanumeric message which is dictated by the page-originating communicant. The human operator reads the message back to verify its accurate transcription, and then initiates the page which includes the alphanumeric textual information which has been transcribed. The human interaction required for these types of alphanumeric paging networks is very expensive when compared to the purely numeric paging networks which do not require human intervention. Certain types of alphanumeric paging networks allow the user to utilize a keyboard or other data input device to define the alphanumeric textual data themselves, thus not requiring the input or assistance of a human operator. However, these types of alphanumeric paging networks are of limited value, since computing devices are still not so widely distributed as to make this universally practical.